


Fetishizing The Extraordinary

by berlitzschen



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcoholism, Beth Character Study, Beth Finds Out, Dysfunctional Family, Established Relationship, Grandfather/Grandson - Freeform, Incest, M/M, Morty and Rick are ok though, The Family Finds Out, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-03
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-11-08 13:46:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11082831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlitzschen/pseuds/berlitzschen
Summary: In a panel, Justin Roiland said that Beth "fetishizes the extraordinary" and said something else to the effect that Beth wants Morty to be extraordinary like her father, and values it above anything else. This, coupled with wives commonly responding with tolerance and forgiveness when they find out their spouses molested their child, made me think Beth might not actually throw Rick out if she were to discover them.So here's a fic about all the fucked up shit that implies, undercutting an otherwise fairly senseless story about Rick and Morty's relationship.





	1. Introduction And An Incidental Thursday

It was an average day in the Smith-Sanchez household. It didn't really matter what day of the week it was. It had no bearing on the family dynamics.

Jerry would stay home, like usual, and be unproductive. No one really knew what he did all day, and no one really cared. But still, one had to wonder what a grown man with no responsibilities did all day.

Distantly, in the back of her mind, Beth wondered if perhaps he was having an affair. A couple of times she had come home during her lunch break, half because she forgot something, half because she wanted to catch Jerry doing _something_. Something despicable she could sink her teeth into that might finally enrage her long enough and deep enough to kick him out. She hated how every time she seemed to resolve herself, some sentimental thing or bittersweet memory cause an ache in her chest and burned her conviction away.

It was spurred by fear, fear she did not need to acknowledge on a three-wine-a-day medication. Fear a therapist might be able to uncover after a year of honest sessions. But such a realization may never come to her, as often is the way with painful feelings too inconvenient to be focused on. And it was not her fault. They were not surface feelings, necessarily. She had just never reflected on the fact that she was unwilling to let go of one good-for-nothing man because she did not want a different, good-for-nothing man to leave. That first abandonment, and the constant dropping in and out of her life, made her into who she was today.

She became a person obsessed with gaining the attention of men, while simultaneously being constantly insecure, which caused her defense mechanism of verbal and emotional abuse towards men. She did not acknowledge these. How could she? Especially when they were buried beneath years of missing her father, not only at important events like her birthday and Christmas. But it was also the little things he missed, like her riding a bike for the first time without training wheels, and her first crush, and her first prom.

Rick did not even have the excuse of waywardness in her younger years. Sometimes he would disappear when no one was awake, or sometimes around dinner time, or on the weekends, but he would come back there every day to lick his wounds and invent in a safe garage, in a normal-looking house, on Earth, a planet so far removed from the buzz of intergalactic and interdimensional life, that no one would find him.

Rick was there when she was young, but he was not home. He was taking rests in between his life, in a place that was convenient, and he was never without a drink.

He was passed out between the garage floor, some sloppily scribbled equations, and a 40 ounce of something that would be most accurately described as pure ethanol, when she took her first steps. Her mother, bless her, got her second steps on video and told Rick they were her first.

He watched the video and was smart enough to know there was no reasonable way Diane could have predicted it was going to happen. Her reaction was fake and awkward, and Rick knew it, but she really did try her best. A better man could have been fooled, or at least, allowed himself to be fooled. Rick's eyes stung as he watched the tape and fumbled for his flask.

If only Beth were as smart as her father. Maybe then she would see that she always chased after men so like her father. Good-for-nothing, in ways so vastly different, but they were so consuming, it did not matter. Her father was clinical, callous, and a drunk. The men could be anything, so long as they were dysfunctional. Some had tempers, others smoked cigarettes and weed so much they tasted like an ashtray, and found pleasure in putting out their joints on little girls, and blowing drags in their faces.

They never stayed, but in their defense, Beth was dysfunctional, too. She bent herself in any way she could for any guy that pursued her, and once she had them, she took shots and jabs to wear the people they were down, until they could not be recognized but for their bare bones and frayed nerves underneath. It could have been an attempt to lower their self-esteem so much that they would not be capable of thinking they were worth someone better than Beth--who was, after all, gorgeous, intelligent, and who had a dangerously toxic mouth. Maybe it was because boys her own age were surrogates for the wrath and violence she really wanted to cut into her father.

In any case, these were things she could not or did not think about processing. All the evidence was there, she need only look at herself hard enough when she was free of the red-tint the wine blurred her world with.

Jerry was an excellent example of these men. He was absolutely nothing like Rick. And he was not his polar opposite, either, so some direct contrast to her father was not obviously and painfully apparent. Jerry was plain, submissive, and insecure enough in his masculinity that he wound up being just the right amount of argumentative to keep Beth's tongue sharp.

And maybe she should have known a man like that, who she had kept for 18 years, who cried during sex, would not have the conniving, or balls, or self-confidence enough to go through with it.

That's why she should not have been surprised when she came home, unexpectedly early, time and time again, and did not find her husband balls deep in one of the neighbors like she hoped. Instead, she found who her husband was on those days. The reality of who the man he was was right before her.

He did puzzles while they were gone. He had one laid out across the dining room table when she had come home. Another time Beth though she had finally caught him, as she saw him hurriedly shove something into the closet. He pathetically attempted to act nonchalant and she shoved him aside, ignored his pleas, and flung open the door. On the ground, crumbled in a heap, laid one of those blankets you make yourself, by buying two lengths of fleece, cutting the edges, and knotting them together. One side was purple and the other was green with horses. It was half-finished, and it was truly sweet, but the way Jerry sputtered and acted as guilty as someone who had the 16-year-old neighbor girl in the closet, grated Beth. She bit into him none-the-less, but she cried as she did it, and held onto the blanket the same way she held onto all those men.

The next time she saw him on one of her surprise visits home, it was with the toaster sat in the middle of the living room. He stared at it and circled it a few times, and went right back to staring at it. She did not even walk through the door. Instead, she just closed it and sat it her car, drinking until someone--it was Morty--was brave enough to come and shuffle her inside the house.

 

And so, here the Smith-Sanchez house was, on a typical day, seemingly too normal to be even worth mentioning the specific day of the week.

How about Thursday?

Thursday spelled normalcy deftly, but it also carried a sense of dread and anxiety to it. It was the day before the last day of the week. It had none of the relief which Friday so strongly bestowed, and it did not have the grounding effect of Wednesday. Thursday was the day right before the end of the week, where an occurrence could suddenly destroy the plans for a relaxing weekend.

So the Smiths and the Sanchez sat down on this very typical Thursday. Jerry tapped away at balloons on his iPad as he sipped his coffee. He was still in his pajamas. He had stopped pretending he actually left the house these days. The family knew better. Rick actually knew better, too, though he was not exactly aware of it at all times. Jerry stayed light on his feet and Rick's senses were often too dulled to notice the existence of what was basically a language-capable sheep.

In the kitchen, toast hung from Summer's mouth as she crudely sliced lemons and oranges and shoved them into a water bottle. Beth read some news story on her phone and at her eggs and bacon beside her father and son, who, in their typical fashion, sat directly next to each other against the window.

"Summer," Jerry frowned and paused his game, "Could you not take all the fruit this time? There's never any left."

"Then buy more fruit." Summer replied, not even looking up from cleaning off the cutting board.

"That fruits not just yours, missy. You can't just take it all and make those weird, fruit-infused waters that are suddenly all the rage."

Summer turned toward her father and gestured with the knife she had just finished cleaning. "I'm the only one who even eats it anyway. It was going bad all the time before I started taking it." She tossed the knife back into the drawer and finished cleaning the rest up.

"Well, I was hungry for apples last night and you know what? There weren't any because you single-handedly deplete our entire fruit supply." Jerry leaned over the back of his chair as he spoke.

"Then buy more fruit." Summer repeated.

"We don't have money to just be throwing away on your fruit monopoly, gosh darn it!" Jerry shouted and slammed his fist on the table. His knuckles hit the corner of the iPad and grazed the top of the skin. He yelped an "ow!" and cradled his hand in the other.

All at once, as if someone were holding cue cards, Beth, Rick, and Summer yelled: "Get a job!" Jerry put his head down and went back to tapping away at his balloons. Morty pushed himself from the table and walked his empty plate back into the kitchen.

He passed by Summer as she was screwing the lid on her drink, and he thought he would be off to school just as easily, just like any other day, no problem. Instead, she shrieked. It was so loud he flinched and cried out. Everyone in the dining room startled and clamored questions and irritations at once.

"Oh my, God!" Summer jumped up and down. "Morty has hickeys!"

"Sh-shut up, Summer!" Morty shouted and covered his neck. However, Summer pulled his arms away and exposed more marks, even below the collar of his shirt.

"Oh my, God. There's more. That's so gross, dude." Morty slapped her hand away and went red in the face. "What's her name? Voracious?"

"Y-y-you're very f-funny, Summer." Morty huffed. "I'm going to school." He ran over to retrieve his backpack but Jerry suddenly held it out of his reach.

"Uh, uh, mister. I wanna know who the lucky lady is." Jerry teased.

"Dad, f-fuck off!" Morty yelled, jumping up. He was too short. Jerry's arm extended over his head gave him at least three feet over Morty.

Beth half-watched the scene, still interested in her news story about a boy drowning under mysterious circumstances. Rick still ate, however, there was a deep frown turning his mouth down and narrowing his eyes.

"We probably have another vampire at the school and she's preying on Morty's virgin-y flesh. Unless--" Summer gasped and turned to Rick. "Are zombies real, too, Grandpa Rick?"

"Shut up, Summer." Rick stood, slapped the back of Jerry's head, and caught Morty's backpack just as the idiot dropped it. He handed him the bag and the kid mumbled something like "thank God" then dashed out the door, followed by a hollering Summer.

"Ow! Damn it, Rick." Jerry complained, rubbing the back of his head. "He would have totally caved, too. All I needed was five more seconds to--"

"To-urp-to do what, Jerry?" Rick said his name like it tasted of acid. "To-to force your son to tell you about something he obviously doesn't want to tell you about? Yeah, real-urp-smart. At least he's smart enough, he uses condoms, unlike you, Jerry." Rick took a swig from his flask and kissed Beth on the head, somewhat regretting the fact that his last dig could also be interpreted towards her, and stumbled off into the garage.

Once he had shut the door, gulped down half the flask, and ignored the two arguing, he pulled out his phone and shot off a message.

<< You're welcome. >>

Morty was on the bus ride to school. Luckily for him, Summer dropped the matter of his hickeys as soon as the bus arrived, and she sat with her friends, leaving Morty to concentrate on fanning the blush out of his face.

He replied back, typing fast with both thumbs.

<< Oh, yeah, I have you to thank for these in the first place. >> Without even pausing, he sent off another one. << You know, for a genius, that was a really stupid thing to do. >>

<< I couldn't help it. >>

Morty frowned. << What's that even supposed to mean? >>

<< You really are an idiot, Morty. >>

Morty just sent back a bunch of question marks intermingled with exclamation points. Rick had constructed this private messaging system for the two of them to talk. He said it wouldn't be safe over actual text messages because the phone company had access to the records of their conversations. He said, "Yes, Morty, even if you delete them.". This was safer. It was a private messenger with access granted to only two phones IP addresses in the entire multiverse. It also required a password to open the app each time. "Yes, Morty, something harder to figure out than your birthday--and don't make it my birthday, either. For fuck's sake." A password entered wrong more than three times would cause all the messages to be deleted. There was also a fake password Morty could give if he were ever under threat of someone, that would open the messenger, but with deleted texts. For someone like Rick, who was smart enough to create something as secure as this, it confused Morty as to why he would think putting hickeys on his grandson was a good idea.

<< You're gonna make me spell it out? That your shit-eating face makes it difficult to control myself. >>

Another one came a minute later while Morty was too overwhelmed by butterflies to reply.

<< Shit, kid, you must know you make me fucking crazy. It's kind of a pain in the ass, especially when we gotta keep a low-profile. >>

<< Sorry, Rick. >> Morty sent after some thought. << But you know, I'm not a mind reader. It's nice to actually hear you say stuff like that, you know? It's nice. >>

There was a delay, as Rick fought against the warmth and smile spreading across his face. He felt like a fucking kid.

<< Took you a long time to respond there. What? You get an erection or something >>

Morty laughed quietly and sent back: << No! >>

<< Fucking liar. >>

<< Not even a little! I gotta go, Rick, the bus is at school. >>

<< Yeah, don't get your phone taken away by Mrs. Pederson again. See ya.>>

Morty typed out a couple of hearts as he was getting off the bus and heading into school, but deleted them, already imagining Rick making fun of him. He dragged his feet all the way into first period and sat down; across town, Rick stumbled over to his work bench for 7 and 1/2 hours of tinkering alone with another device. Both of them wishing they were with the other right now.


	2. Lying And Communication (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Way too late to be up yelling about your feelings. Also way too late to be up acting on your feelings.

It was another week or so until the next incident occurred. It was late, too late. Too late for Morty to have been up on a school night, and too late for Beth to be up when she had work in the morning, but luckily, it was not too late for Rick to lie. 

Morty had been helping Rick for a few hours in the garage that night. It would have been sweet, the two of them just being alone, but they were not ever alone. Not in the house, not when the family was home—and their presence putting anxiety at both of their heels. 

The clandestine nature of their relationship forced Morty to lose out on a lot of the things he really looked forward to in a relationship. He wanted to be kissed and cuddled on movie dates and made out with and touched inside and out until he saw stars. Instead, they watched movies together from opposite ends of the couch, the space between them stretching them apart so much it made Morty ache.

But Morty understood why. They could not have any slipups; could not give anyone any indication that there was anything different about their relationship. Not that most people, including the Smiths, could have fathomed something like this on their wildest day. But it was, in the most basic words, a thing that people knew about, and a thing that most people would not associate with anything happy, healthy, or romantic. On Earth, they had to be normal. Morty had to _pretend_ to be normal. 

When they were on their adventures, it was different. It was so amazingly different that Morty did not even mind how tired he was the next day, or all the weird power naps he had to sneak in class, so that he could be bright-eyed and run fast enough from whatever terrible situation they always seemed to find themselves in. But afterward, high on the adrenaline, and a bit scared from the unsaid understanding that they could’ve lost each other, the two of them always found their way into each other’s arms. 

They even went out on a proper date and everything. Saw a Ball Fondlers movie in an alternate universe. They sat in the back row of the theatre with Rick’s arm wrapped around Morty, mouth alternating between slurping down his blue raspberry-vodka slushy and affixing itself to basically anywhere on Morty’s head, neck, and face. Even his ears were not safe from his grandfather’s teasing tongue and nipping teeth. 

Afterward, they went out and got ice cream—and this time the ice cream did not have flies in it, _Summer_. It was obvious in the way Rick’s heavy gaze traveled all over Morty’s body that he was picturing something other than his ice cream cone between Morty’s lapping tongue and tantalizing fingers. When they kissed after that, Morty could taste the salted caramel lingering in Rick’s mouth, but by the time they’d finished in the ship, drifting above a pulsing nebula, the only thing either of them tasted was the rawness of each other. 

It was hard enough in its own right for Morty to pretend, but lately, it had been getting harder, since Rick had stopped touching him entirely. Gone were these dates and little escapades. Ever since he texted Rick on Thursday and got off the bus for school it had been business. As business as their typical adventures could be considered, that is. 

It was bugging Morty and he was starting to wonder if maybe he had done something wrong, or if Rick was saving second thoughts about the whole thing. Thoughts like that only succeeded in working himself into a ball of anxiety, and after a week of it, his nerves were almost completely shot. He wanted Rick to acknowledge his presence the way he craved. 

They were in the middle of inventing . . . something. Rick said something about needing a machine which could automate the refining process of some alien substance. That was really all Morty understood, anyway. In reality, it was probably purifying space cocaine into some ultra-potent designer-drug Rick would sell to some space banditos so he could fund something even more diabolical. Morty did not really care at the moment. He was too busy how he was supposed to bring up the subject of Rick’s sudden aphenphosmphobia. He spaced out, trying to concentrate so hard, that he did not hear Rick when he asked for something. An empty can smacked against Morty’s thigh and clattered to the floor, pulling him back to reality. 

“W-w-what the hell? W-why’d you throw this at me, Rick?” Morty bent down and gestured with the aluminum can, as if he had to prove to Rick what just happened. He tossed it in the recycling bin and turned back to his grandfather.

“I said ‘get me a fleeb’, Morty.” Rick motioned to the cupboard across the room. “A-a-and you just sat there like a vegetable for a full minute. It-it was starting to creep me out, Morty.” His voice was even and suspicious.

Morty skittered and retrieved the fleeb for Rick and hopped up on a part of the table that was not covered in various fragments of alien and earth technology. 

“S-sorry, Rick” Morty hastily apologized, hoping Rick would just drop the subject. He knew that would not happen, though. His thoughts were confirmed when Rick’s mocking grumbles filled the otherwise fairly empty space in the garage.

“Wh-wh-wh-what’re you even thinking so hard about, huh?”

Morty sighed and Rick quirked a brow. His grandson sounded entirely irritated. Rick grinned and leaned back in his chair, eyeing him with an all-too-interested expression. 

“Nothing. C-can we just drop it?” Morty huffed. 

“Uh-uh, M—OURty. Not a chance. Wha-what’s got your little balls retracting inside?”

“—.”

“You know, b-because you’re such a pussy, Morty.” Rick took a long, slow drink from his flask, eyes never leaving the young boy atop his table.

“Sh-shut up, Rick. I-I-I know what you’re trying to do.”

“Ooh!” Rick uttered gleefully. “Do you, Morty? Has your little noodle figured it out? I’m impressed.” He grinned evilly, showing his tongue and teeth.

“You’re just trying to get a rise out of me so I’ll—.”

“Maybe your testicles are still there, after all.”

Morty bit his lip the way he always did when he was getting incredibly frustrated. “W-w-why are you busting my balls over this, Rick? Huh? W-w-why can’t you just let it go?”

“Cause then your balls are gonna get stuck up there, Morty. A-a-a-and I don’t know if your wimpy ass is gonna be able to get them to drop again.”

“—.” 

“They’ll be g—ONe for good, Morty.”

“God damn it, Rick!” Morty yelled, leaning into Rick’s face. “I-I-I-It’s not like you actually care about me o-or my balls.”

Rick frowned and put his flask down. It fell on its side but neither of them let it distract them. Rick shifted until he was so close to Morty he could almost taste the boy’s mouth. “W-what’s that su—PPOUsed to mean?”

“Ooh, I-I-I dunno, Rick. M-maybe it means I’m sick of you being all distant and shit—.” 

“I haven’t been distant.” Rick replied, distantly. 

“R-really, Rick? _Really?_ So this whole a-a-aversion you suddenly have to touching me is just my imagination, huh? I-I-I’m making stuff up here? Y-You refusing to look at me for more than two seconds is just in my head?”

Rick looked away and that just pissed Morty off even more. 

“You see?” Morty shouted, voice accusingly and bordering hysterical. “I-I-I-I understand the house, but I couldn’t be able to walk five feet on an alien planet or in another dimension without your hand on my ass. Wh-wh-what’s the deal? Did you decide letting your grandson suck your cock was a bad idea?” Morty’s voice had risen and only kept rising. So much so Rick was worried he might wake someone up.

He rose from his seat, a whole three heads taller than Morty normally, but almost eye-level with him when the boy sat on the table. He only bent down slightly, arms on either side of Morty’s thighs, effectively trapping him beneath Rick. 

“Y-Y-You _really_ gotta keep-keep it down, Morty.”

“K-Keep what down, Rick? I thought I was talking about som-something that didn’t exist?”

“Look, Morty, I know what you’re doing, you little shit—.”

“O-Oh, but I thought I wasn’t doing anything. T-The real mystery here is what you’re doing.” Morty sneered. Rick was thankful that his voice had at least quieted some. His grandson’s rage certainly was not quelled, but at least he still seemed to have some sense about him.

“I’m trying to keep a low profile, Morty. Because last week your damn sister got the whole family all riled up. C-Can’t you wrap your dumb little head around the fact that if we are found out it’s not gonna be as simple as burying a couple of bodies?”

Morty lunged for the lapels of Rick’s coat and gripped them tight, unwilling to let his grandfather escape. “T-that doesn’t explain why you stopped everything else, Rick!”

ick inhaled sharply and Morty readied himself for the onslaught, ready to dish back as good as he got. But it never came. Rick broke eye contact and sagged in his stance. He let out a tired breath and rubbed his face. 

“Y-You’re a real pain in the ass, Morty.” His words were harsh but his tone was gentle like honey. Morty softened at the sound and waited patiently for Rick to continue. The older man placed his hands on Morty’s thighs and thumbed gently along the dip of his hip. “It’s hard you little—.” Rick dropped his head down to Morty’s shoulder. Morty reached up and wound his fingers through the poorly kept hair. “I went so long without touching you, but now since I have—since I know what it feels like, how fucking good it feels, Morty, it’s so fucking hard not to. Every time I see you I j-j-just want to wrap you up and never let you go a-a-and it’s fucking _pissing me off_ because I can’t. I can’t keep you in my lap while we watch interdimensional TV. Can’t do all the things that you deserve, baby. And every time I touch you it just makes it hurt worse during the times that I can’t.”

Morty chewed his lip. He should not have assumed the way he did. He did not even consider what Rick might be feeling, and he felt bad for it. He really was a kid, he thought, but he also knew Rick should have told him, too. Communication was a two-way street and both of them should have said something a sooner. Now they were wasting their time together arguing when they could have been doing something much more amazing. 

“I’m sorry, Rick.” Morty wrapped his arms around his grandfather and squeezed him tight. He pulled away after a minute and carefully held his face, enraptured by the sharp blue of Rick’s eyes against his rough and calloused skin. “B-But you should have told me, y’know. Th-Th-This is just like the thing with you biting my neck, Rick. Y-Y-You gotta talk to me.” 

Rick sighed and clasped Morty’s hand between his own. “Okay, Morty.” It was hard for Rick to concentrate on anything after that. He was too busy relishing the connection between their hands, absolutely loving the feel of Morty’s much smaller ones completely held in his own. 

Suddenly, Morty visibly shivered. “O-Oh geez, Rick. Your hands are so cold.”

Rick smiled. “Yeah, b-BOUdy’s gotta expend energy to more important placed, babe.” 

His grandson gave a big yawn and nuzzled into his hands. Rick glanced over at the clock and cursed. It was 1:08 A.M. He stood and shuffled Morty off the table, not really wanting to. 

“It’s late as shit, Morty. You gotta get to bed or your mom will bitch at me all day tomorrow.”

Morty gave a pathetic little whine and tugged his grandfather towards the door. “C-Come with me, Rick.”

“No.”

“Y-Y-You owe me, Rick.” Morty nagged like the time they were in the pawn shop. 

He groaned, knowing he did not have much resolve to resist his grandson’s endearing little pleas. “Yeah, yeah, okay, you little turd. We-We-We gotta be quiet though.”

Morty beamed and nodded his head eagerly. Together they crept up the stairs, completely stepping over the creakiest board. Morty was light and giddy and Rick could not help but warm at the sight. He smiled the whole way up, watching his grandson with unconcealed fondness, and rolled his eyes at the feeling of Morty’s dorky little fingers prodding so they could lace themselves like a spell between Rick’s ones.

The two of them quietly nudged Morty’s bedroom door open and did not bother flicking on the light switch. Morty tugged Rick by his hand, knowing the layout of his own room by heart, and unwilling to let Rick knock into something and get hurt, or give them away, more likely. 

Morty laid down on the bed and soundlessly pulled Rick on top of him, biting his cheek to suppress his delighted squeals. He so badly wanted to press himself deeply into Rick, right enough that they could not be separated. Rick was the entire universe in a single being. His touch was like a super nova, spreading across his skin fast and enveloping, wanting to possess and consume every inch it came into contact with. His words were thousands of things: the brilliant utterings of a galaxy; the danger and ruthless of an exploding sun; but right now, between the two of them, his words were gravity, inertia, and momentum. All the known laws in the universes compelled Morty to follow their beckoning. 

He could not be blamed for this. After all, he was but a human, being caressed by the entire expanse of the universe. All the praises and kissed lit up his skin like a backdrop of stars and Morty briefly wondered, before his mouth was too being explored, how many stories could be told by drawing lines between the places where Rick’s lips had graced. 

Morty reached out, touched the cosmos, and watched in awe as it beckoned him onward. He realized that is his very touch could have the universe suppressing a whimper and begging for more, then we he was not a human at all. No, if Rick were the universe and all its boundless splendor, then Morty was the unfettered and immortal god, and every atom of inside the universe drove him into the arms of god, overcome with the need to love and to share secrets of themselves together and forever. Just the two of them, together, across all realities, the only constant thing tying the pandemonium of existence together and granting some sense to the chaos.

And then something foreign and uninvited shattered their union, charging the space between them with panic. Beth’s voice, uncertain and groggy, at the threshold of the bedroom door.

“Dad?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I left you guys on a cliffhanger because I'm a terrible person I'm sorry.


	3. Lying And Doubt (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Beth. Sweet, sweet, Beth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-serious trigger warning, I fucking roast Jerry alive in this chapter (metaphorically).
> 
> Serious trigger warning, I casually mention suicide and molestation here.

“Hi, sweetie.” Rick was across the room in two big strides, subtly pressuring his daughter out the door, using his body to block the hallway light from illuminating the incriminating scene. Luckily he was old, and not as easily aroused as Morty. He had no erection to conceal, and even if he did, his daughter’s voice would’ve probably been enough to drain all the blood from his body. His heart hammered in his chest the way it did whenever he walked through the streets of a pro-federation outfit. But years of close calls and deceptions and all-around illegal excursions made something like getting caught with his tongue in his grandson’s mouth seem like petty theft. But planetary mindsets and Earth morality be a bitch, and Rick wasn’t a fucking idiot. He knew the risks he was taking. 

“You shouldn’t be up this late.” Rick gave her a teasing smile to make the fatherly tone he used easier on her ears. “You have work in the morning.”

“I was just coming down to get a drink. But Dad, you shouldn’t be bothering Morty so late on a school night. Why can’t you take him on adventures during normal business hours.” She was pretty peeved. 

Rick softened his expression and made out like he was suitably chastised. “Yeah, I know, Beth. A-a-and I wasn’t taking him on an adventure, alright? He just fell asleep in the garage while he was helping me work and I was just bringing him to—URP—bed. I-I-I won’t keep him up late like this again, I promise.” 

Beth sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Okay, Dad. Thank you. Will you get some sleep, too?” 

Rick seemed to consider this for a moment. “M-maybe. We’ll—URP—see how-how long it takes for me to finish up the thing I’m doing. ‘S real important a-a real important science thing.” 

“Okay, Dad. Good night.” 

“Night.”

Beth wandered downstairs and Rick slunk past her into the garage. She finished her glass of water and moseyed back upstairs, still half asleep. She crawled back into bed and went right back asleep, not putting any thought to the events she’d just witnessed.

That is, until the morning.

—

Breakfast was normal and easy the next morning. Freshly brewed coffee tinged the air and drew Rick out of the garage sometime around 7:30. He filled a mug and drank it without adding anything, though he alternated between sipping the coffee and taking swigs from his flask. Summer and Jerry arrived fifteen minutes later, dressed and eager for breakfast. Beth made soft-boiled egg and toast medley. It was already by 7:50, but still there was no sign of Morty. She passed the bowls out, even one to the empty place beside Rick.

“But Beth,” Jerry whined, indignantly. “You know I don’t like soft-boiled eggs. They’re gross! Egg yokes should be cooked through.”

“No, they fucking shouldn’t, Jerry.” Rick bit.

“Go make some cereal then.” Beth huffed. 

“Maybe I will.” Jerry stood up exaggeratedly and noisily scraped his chair against the linoleum, grating on Rick’s not-nearly-drunk-enough-for-early-morning-fuckery sensitive ears. 

“Fucking good,” Rick grunted as he took Jerry’s untouched bowl and started eating his serving, too. “H-Hey, Jerry, while you’re up, do you think you could get me some salt, and—urp—find yourself a job? It’s probably way in the back of the pantry. You might have to look pretty hard for one. On second thought, forget the salt, Jerry. I-I got plenty of that already. But it’d be really nice if you didn’t come back and bitch about the cooking my daughter does for you in addition to being the sole source of income in this house.” 

“God damn, Grandpa Rick.” Summer sniggered. She reached across the table and high-fived him. 

Jerry looked miserable as he assembled some cheerios into a bowl filled with day-old milk. Of course, Jerry would make cereal like a weirdo, putting the the milk in before the cereal. A disgrace. It’s a wonder Summer and Morty aren’t completely ruined. 

Beth frowned over her coffee. “Morty still hasn’t come down.” She saw Rick moving before she could even finish her thought. 

“I’ll go—URP—get him.” Rick shoved the last bits of egg and toast into his mouth, grabbed Morty’s bowl, and stacked his empties in the sink. He shuffled upstairs and returned about five minutes later, walking lazily behind a sleepy Morty. His hair was disheveled, skin flushed, and eyes still blinking blearily at the too bright morning sun. “H-Hurry up,” Rick muttered and shoved the bowl into his hands. Morty stared blankly at it and the two ambled over to their spots next to each other at the dining room table. 

“Well, good morning, sleepy head.” Jerry greeted, side-eying Rick. Rick glared at him over Morty’s brown curls. 

Beth decided not go comment specifically on it. Instead, she turned her attention to Morty’s terrible bed head. “Sweetie, you really should comb your hair. You don’t want to go out looking like you woke up on the floor.” 

Morty paused from shoving egg into his mouth and reached up to smooth out his hair, but before he could even set his spoon down, Rick’s fingers were already there, carding through his hair. Starting at his natural part, they fanned out, expertly realigning all the out-of-line curls to their rightful places amongst the chaotic locks. Featherlight, and with what was perhaps too much affection to be appropriate, Rick tucked a stray curl behind Morty’s ear. At last, he scratched at the short hairs along the nape of his Grandson’s neck. 

Something escaped his lips, then, something Beth wasn’t entirely sure she heard right, muffled as it was by her father slurping his coffee, and the argument Summer and Jerry were having about who really deserves to drive the car. But she could have sworn that before Morty stood up and set his bowl in the kitchen, running soapy water into his and Rick’s two bowls, she heard her father murmur out “perfect.” 

But before she could think on it for any length of time, the entire family was clearing up from the table. Jerry shuffling out the front door to who-gives-a-fuck-where, Rick off to the garage, and Morty and Summer to school. Morty slipped on his shoes with one hand and leaned against the door with the other. He called out a weak little “Good bye”, and while it wasn’t directed at anyone specifically, Beth saw his eyes never strayed from Rick’s retreating form. His expression faltered more and more before returning to a glowing smile when his grandfather’s rough but amicable voice called back: “See ya, Mort.”

Beth went off to work after setting everything in the dishwasher. Her drive into the city was easy and without incident, and she barely focused on the changing traffic lights in front of her, or the occasional flash of break-lights when she rode someone to close. Instead, her mind was preoccupied with thoughts of her son and father. 

She mused, as she crossed the highway, that her father stayed up with Morty for a full five minutes after he had gone to get him. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, she knew, but as she reflected on that, she found herself remembering the events of last night. Her father had been fast, backed her out of the room before she could even process anything, her son’s bedroom door closed, and her father readily agreeing with her. But that wasn’t what caused her to call out for her dad in the first place. It couldn’t have been. She couldn’t see into the bedroom past the little sliver of light that cast across the shaggy carpet. 

No, sight gave her nothing to suspect anything was amiss. But she did hear the creak of a box spring, and a grunt from her father, which both perfectly lined up with what he told her—that he had brought Morty to bed, maybe even carried him. Her father was strong but he was old. Carrying a teenage boy up a flight of stairs would’ve been exercise enough to merit a grunt and some heavy breathing. It could’ve even accounted for the way his normally spiky hair had been matted back against his scalp, or maybe even the way his shirt had been twisted in awkward ways, like a memory of someone tugging you too hard. With a sinking feeling in her stomach that made her so dizzy she thought she would wretch her breakfast and coffee up, she realized no explanation her father posed could account for the unmistakable sound of hungry lips sliding against each other. She thought the sound she heard from her son must’ve been a sleepy sigh, content to finally be in his bed, but now she wondered if it wasn’t a sound of bliss. A moan her father managed to pry from her son’s fourteen-year-old fucking throat. 

She had nothing to prove anything by. Just circumstantial musings, and things that didn’t add up. Years of the scientific method and chemistry labs made her all-too aware that wasn’t any real evidence. All she had was an observable phenomena—the interactions between her father and son—and a suspicion twisted into a hypothesis she couldn’t voice, but regardless, a compulsion to find the answer consumed her thoughts. 

From the time she clocked in, her physical body was working, doing tasks, and her mouth was even giving instructions to nurses to refill anesthetic bottles or prep a table for an upcoming operation, but her mind disconnected, and only checked back for brief moments to react to external stimuli. Otherwise, it was combing through years of knowledge about empirical study. She knew it didn’t need to be that complicated. But creatures intelligent enough to know they’re being observed will and do act differently, both intentionally and unintentionally. For something like this, she would need to make sure her father and son knew nothing about her suspicions. 

And if it turned out everything was normal, that there was nothing strange or heinous to speak of, everything would be fine. She didn’t need to tell anyone, at least, not yet. That would’ve been jumping the gun. She couldn’t just throw accusations at her father without some sort of proof. But as she dropped a bottle of iodine, shattering into a hundred pieces and staining the white tile coppery-crimson, she tried to reassure herself that yes, she absolutely could confront her father about molesting her son. 

She cleaned up the mess she made, offered some joke about having butter fingers today, and retreated back into her thoughts, and the terrible implication of that thought. And all that would happen as a result of it. Her father either leaving or being hauled off to jail—probably the former. He could disappear in a moment’s notice if it fancied him, and never return, not even for her funeral when she inevitably slit her wrists in the bathtub after realized even her fifth bottle of merlot couldn’t replace him. The family would never be the same. 

But it was probably a misunderstanding. Just a misunderstanding. She could watch them until she was certain, and then everything could go back to the way it was before last night. 

She brushed the red-dyed, broken bits of glass into the trash, but couldn’t get the stain out of the floor. Someone said a janitor could use some bleach on it later that night, but Beth knew it could never return to its original state.


	4. Inappropriate (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beth won't let it go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, Beth is being a little . . . it's weird.

Beth didn’t get off work until five which left Morty, who actually got to attend a full day of school for once, two hours to spend with Rick. Morty forgot how exhausting a full eight hours of school really was, especially when he was operating on only six hours of sleep. By the time he stumbled into the house and threw his backpack down, he was considering napping until dinner. Or maybe even through dinner. It didn’t matter if it would make his sleep schedule wonky. He had long since resigned himself to the reality that so long as Rick was around, he and his sleep schedule, were doomed to always be in disarray. 

_Maybe I should start drinking coffee,_ Morty thought to himself, as he passed through the kitchen and headed into the garage. He didn’t knock. It’d be like asking permission to come into his own home. The garage had become his space as much as it was Rick’s. 

The two of them had long since forgone pleasantries in their interactions with each other. They didn’t need greetings with each other. Not when the presence of the other was the only ‘hello’ either of them ever truly wanted. 

“H-h-how was your day?” Rick asked, not looking up from his task of setting in screws into his latest contraption. 

Morty sighed, “tiring. I’m-I’m not used to a whole day of school, y’know? I kinda just wanna g-go to bed,” Morty gave a little yawn.

Rick set his invention down and swiveled his chair towards Morty. He made a ‘come hither’ motion that Morty followed without a second thought. As he climbed into his grandfather’s lap, the old man breathed contently. Rubbing his hands up and down Morty’s back, gently massaging the day’s stresses away. Morty sagged bonelessly against him and allowed pleased gasps and groans to escape his lips. 

It may not have been the couch, but it was still Rick, and that was more than enough for Morty. 

“Missed you,” Rick murmured against his hair. 

In response, Morty snuggled deeper into Rick’s chest and snaked his arms around his neck. He ran his hands through his grandfather’s silvery-blue hair. Moments like these were treasured. Though they both thrived off the adrenaline of their adventures, quiet moments like these allowed them to breathe only themselves and each other. Rick could take them anywhere, but it was only when they melted into each other that they lost their wanderlust. All the stars and the galaxies and the expanse of the multiverse could never eclipse the splendor that was a resonance of two hearts, separated by decades, beating in tandem. 

Their atoms bonded, propelling them through existence in a covalence that could never be split apart, lest they drifted around, tormented forever in their unbalance. Rick had already seen six decades of the universe, mostly alone, and he knew that nothing could replace the simple calmness that Morty’s presence granted him. It agonized him to be away from his boy. 

And Morty was ruined in the most exquisite sense of the word. Rick’s existence, being so unrivaled in his sublimity, forever spoiled Morty from enjoying a simple Terrain life, doing his taxes and wondering if he should refinance his house in thirty years. Morty could never be satisfied with a quiet life on Earth. Not after all he’d seen. Not after he’d experienced the way his molecules vibrated every time he slipped through a portal. Earth and Earthly troubles were a laughable inconvenience compared to the calamity of the infinite. 

Morty could never settle for Earth. Not when he had a taste of Rick. And Rick would never again float aimlessly through space, at least, not without Morty beside him. And the more they had of each other, the more they dissolved into one another. As their edges blurred, their fears drifted away. It had no place in their embrace. And nothing would ever tear them apart. 

Morty kissed Rick, softly and lovingly. And Rick kissed back, drinking every flavor of his grandson. He pulled him impossibly closer until there was no space separating them. Groaning, Morty too tightened his hold on Rick. 

Between kisses that only got breathier, Morty managed to speak. 

“W-w-we should go somewhere tomorrow,” Morty sighed.

Rick hummed in question. 

“Y-yeah—” Morty was cut off as Rick bit his bottom lip, “L-like on a date.” 

Rick moved onto Morty’s neck, sucking on the tender skin. He stopped himself, though, and dipped below the hem of Morty’s shirt. Sucking hard and adding some pressure from his teeth, he licked his lips at the blood blossoming just under the surface of the skin. 

“S-shit, R-Rick,” gasped Morty. 

“This way I still get to mark you, baby,” Rick explained, stutter suddenly absent. 

“R-Rick!” Morty exclaimed, pushing his grandfather away. “I was t-t-trying to tell you something, geez.” 

Rick chuckled as he placed a few apologetic kisses upon Morty’s flushed cheeks. “’M sorry, baby. I-I-I-I think a date i-i-is a wonderful idea. W-w-where do you have in mind?” Rick moved his hands to Morty’s hips and traced nonsensical patterns into the exposed skin.

“W-well, Rick, I-I-I was actually thinking you know the most places in the galaxy s-so maybe you take us somewhere awesome. I dunno.” Morty rubbed the back of his neck. He bit his lip and fidgeted with his fingers. 

Rick cursed silently. The kid really was too cute for his own good. 

“S-S—OURe, Morty. Y-Y-Y-Y-You don't have to worry about a thing. Grandpa will take care of it. A-a-and afterward, babe—baby, you’re gonna wanna—you’re gonna bust a nut, Morty, a-at just how incredible it is. W-W-We’re not talking about _earth_ dates here, Morty. A real fucking Sanchez style date. J-Just you wait, dawg.”

Morty giggled. “Okay, Rick.” He kissed his grandfather one final time on the lips and hopped off. “S-S-So what were you working on?” He eyed the little device, picked it up, and examined it with the same care he used when he was rubbing his grandfather’s shoulders, trying to get him to sleep. 

“T-This here, Morty, is a quant—OUm-quantum entra—fuck it, Morty. It’s a thing, and when it’s in the presence of. . .” For the next hour or so, Rick tinkered in the garage with Morty beside him, fetching parts and tools for his grandfather. Rick explained everything’s function and interworkings the best he could. He used analogies he thought Morty could understand, and the whole affair wound up being very pleasant for Rick. It was relaxing, the two of them sharing the same space, talking about the planets with the purest plutonic rock, which nebulae had the most laid back security forces, what species you could bribe with pocket lint. 

Rick’s flask hadn’t left its place inside his lab coat pocket since Morty wandered into the garage. He never even thought about it. The pain of everything he’d seen and done ebbed away when he was with Morty. Questions of science and theory even competed for consideration in his mind. Schemes and the uncertainty of tomorrow didn’t come into play. Rick focused solely on the present. And that word itself was something to be pondered.

At least in English, the fact that the word expressing current time coincided with a synonym for ‘gift’, didn’t escape Rick. Looking at Morty, especially like this, breathing the same air, talking with each other, made Rick realize it was a fitting coincidence. 

The time he spent with Morty was the greatest gift the universe had given him. If there was a God, then they weren’t a fair one. Rick had been given more than he ever deserved with Morty, especially considering the life he’d lived. But he wasn’t one to relinquish his blessings, even ones unfairly bestowed upon him. And neither was Morty. 

With Rick, he came alive. He saw worlds and things most could only dream of, but that wasn’t the only thing. To suggest so would be an oversimplification of the experience. 

Under Rick’s praises and careful hands, Morty glowed. He did things he never thought he was capable of. And as he collapsed into bed after every adventure, no matter how drained, Morty slept. Satisfaction and euphoria accompanied his days now. Before Rick, Morty saw the monotony of life unravel before him like a never-ending road. In school, his youth, his inexperience, and his anxiety paralyzed him. Instead of pushing him forward, they shouted at him, demanding to know why he wasn’t there already. 

But he orbited around Rick, his safety, amidst the vast chaos of the universe, which seemed to move around him and Rick, like they were the only two certain things in existence. From Rick’s gravity, he could reach out and explore the universe. He could touch and be touched, help and be helped, and when things got too wild and too fast, he always had a safe place to fall back into. A place that was warm, and smelled faintly of chemicals, but it was his sanctuary. No matter where he roamed, he did them without hesitance, because he traveled amongst the stars with the only home he’d ever need. 

These two lives, each little more than carbon and stars, found an exquisite completeness when they fell into each other’s pull. Breaking apart was inconceivable. 

But it seemed there might be one force in the universe capable of atomizing them.

— 

“Morty won’t be going on any more adventures with you, Dad.”

Beth spent the time she used preparing dinner to finalize her plan-of-action. There would be no way she could determine what was going on if half the time her subjects were in a different dimension. She had to be able to observe them as much as possible. 

While normally animals put into stressful situations reacted defensively, they still reacted honestly. Life became about survival and so they employed their most primitive tactics to stay alive. Beth believed she could throw her father and son off their games just enough to coax out their desperation. She had accumulated enough PTO that she decided the take the entire next week off, and devote her time instead to her study. Of course, not even telling her husband. 

It was Friday, which meant she could use the weekend to act normal and to lull them both into a false sense of security. She had to make sure neither of them suspected a thing so she could create the set of conditions that would produce the best results. Under pressure, and withheld the privacy of their adventures, maybe her father, who was never good at resisting his addictions, would become fevered enough to do something inside the house, where Beth could bear witness. He’d already been up to _something_ the other night. Beth figured she could force Rick into being sloppy—sloppier than he already apparently was. 

Her father was smart, but she was smart, too. Smart enough she didn’t ever let her father let on to how smart she really was. 

And so she made dinner as usual, poured herself one glass of wine to take the edge off, and called everyone in. She made her announcement casually as if she were asking someone to pass her a fork.

“W-W-What? Why not?” Rick stopped eating and frowned at his daughter. “I-I-Is this because of last night? Because I thought he went over this, sweetie—” Next to him, Morty, too, stopped eating, and his gaze wandered between his mom and grandfather. 

Jerry thought he would try to get a word in. “What happened last night?” He turned and glared at Rick.

Simultaneously, and quite eerily, too, both Rick and Beth responded in the same annoyed tone: “Shut up, Jerry.”

Jerry made a face, put his head down, and went back to pushing his food around. 

“No, Dad, it’s not that,” said Beth, between sips of wine, “Morty’s midterms are in a couple of weeks and I want him to have at least Cs in all his classes. After that, you guys can go back to doing whatever.” 

Rick groaned. 

“Aw, geez, Mom. Y-You’re really asking a lot,” Morty said.

“I’m really not, Morty. Besides,” Beth paused, watching them from the corner of her eye, “your grandfather can help you study.”

Morty smiled at his grandfather and wiggled in his seat. “Y-Yeah, Rick. W-With you helping me, w-w-w-we’ll be back to adventures in no time,” he squealed, pulling on Rick’s lab coat sleeves. 

She watched Rick bat him away with one hand and finish off his glass of milk with the other. He reached down and ruffled Morty’s hair, a grin curling one side of his face. 

Beth almost shattered her glass. 

She watched her son giggle and nuzzle into her father’s old, calloused hands like they were a hearth during a blizzard. And the worst part of it all was that she could see him restraining himself. Squeezing his hands together, willing them to stay still. It was the look all kids got when they saw something they couldn’t touch.  
Beth wondered what they’d be doing if no one could see them. If Morty would’ve thrown his arms around her father’s neck; if her father would have forgone touching his head altogether, and just settled his hands on her son’s hips. 

And suddenly, she was pondering the things they’ve done when no one’s looking. How many times had they watched inter-dimensional cable, sitting closer than what could be considered acceptable for a grandfather and a grandson? How many of their embraces were tighter than they should’ve been, with hands slipping to places they shouldn’t? And how many times after an adventure or when they were hidden in the garage had Rick kissed Morty breathless? 

She drained the last of her wine. 

“S-Sure, Morty,” Rick said and finished the last of his food.

Beth stood up, grabbed her plate, and offered to take her father’s.

“Thanks, sweetie,” Rick said, not looking at her. He was still gazing at Morty, eyes half-lidded, like watching him eat was relaxing.

It was a shame, really. Beth wanted to show how well she could fake a smile. She washed up the dishes and assembled the leftovers into tupperware for later. Summer went out with some friends for the night; Jerry slunk off to the study; Morty followed only a half-step behind Rick into the garage. As the door clicked shut, she leaned against the counter and wondered if what she was doing was okay.

She brushed the thought from her mind about as quickly as it came with a gulp of wine she took straight from the bottle. She took the bottle with her upstairs. It was only seven o’clock, but she crawled into bed, not bothering to change her clothes. She finished the bottle and fell into a dreamless sleep before the hour was up.


	5. Attachment (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That's pretty fucked up, Beth.

Even though she hadn’t used them in years, Beth kept the baby monitors. Maybe it was sentimental. Maybe she thought she could give them to Summer or Morty when they had kids of their own. She replaced the batteries this morning and contemplated the best room to place them in.

She knew the best option would’ve been the garage, but Rick knew every inch of his workshop and would surely find them. She didn’t know the space that well to determine which cupboards were opened the least.

She also considered Morty’s bedroom, but ultimately decided on the living room. It was the place the two of them spent the most time in together. She stuffed the recording end of the baby monitor under the couch and placed the receiving end in the bottom of her sock drawer before anyone else had risen.

Satisfied, Beth made herself two pieces of toast and readied herself for the day of mentally cataloging events.

In under an hour the whole family had gathered in the living room, enjoying a relaxing day inside as a thunderstorm rolled overhead. Darkened, the sky shuddered forebodingly. Flashes of lightning and cracks of thunder sparked in the distance and the clouds poured their wealth upon the town. Jerry pulled back the blinds and commented stupidly about how the lawn wouldn’t need to be watered for at least a week.

Beth grabbed a book and sat in one of the armchairs adjacent to Rick and Morty, who occupied the couch along with Summer. 

Beth didn’t really know what she expected. They sat apart on the couch, not eye-fucking each other, just watching interdimensional-cable and laughing every so often. Though the space that separated them was not as great as the one which separated Morty in the middle from Summer on the other end, it was still appropriate. 

She observed them from over the top of her book, flipping the page every so often.

At one point, Morty sat up and offered to grab Rick a beer. Her father chewed his lip thoughtfully then grunted affirmatively. 

Morty seemed to deflate for a second before perking back up and scuttling into the kitchen. Rick didn't turn away from the show even as Morty came back. 

“H-Here you go, Rick.” Morty dug his toe into the carpet.

Morty’s fingers lingered on the can and fell limp at his side as Rick snatched the beer from him without looking. He popped the lid open and didn't say anything as he downed half in one go. Her son stood there like he was waiting for something. Whatever it was, it never came. 

Rick sighed, “Morty, s-s-sit the fuck down. Y-You’re making me—urp—nervous.” 

Morty frowned and crossed his arms. He flopped back on the couch, this time further away from Rick.

And, for reasons Beth couldn’t quite understand, her heart panged. Knowing she was the one who had orchestrated this whole thing. All she wanted to do was gather evidence—at least—that’s what she thought.

But she already had some evidence. Sort of. 

Her stomach tightened and suddenly she was uncertain. 

The feeling didn’t dissipate as the day continued. Her stomach fell even more every hour her father and son were driven further and further apart. Yeah, she’d intended to stress them out. Throw them out of their comfort zone, but she didn’t realize it would create so much friction. She just wanted to make them sloppy. And now she wasn’t sure if she could wait out the time it took for them to break from the tension she’d manufactured. 

Her father was still and unresponsive. As the hours progressed and the storm lessened, his mood did not. It only increasingly soured. By dinner time Rick had downed eleven beers, all except the original he’d grabbed himself. At one point he got lazy and just brought out one of the six-packs and settled down with it. He made quick work of the first four in under an hour but slowed as his head slumped against the couch. 

He didn’t laugh. Just watched the TV impassively. 

And he wasn’t the only one.

Neither Summer or Jerry paid attention to the TV but it seemed Rick and Morty's moods disturbed Summer enough to leave the room. It made sense. She sat much closer to the two of them than either her or her husband. 

But Morty had stopped paying attention to the TV a long time ago. His expression shifted from dejected, to pissed, then back to dejected again. Every once in awhile, she caught him watching Rick from the corner of his eyes. Sometimes he openly turned to Rick as her father opened his mouth, looking like he was about to say something. Morty’s eyes turned hopeful and then filled back in anger as the only sound that left Rick’s throat was a rancid burp.

At some point, Morty huffed and got up. Jerry asked him what was up and Morty only grumbled: “g-going to my room.” Beth told him dinner would be at five and Morty shrugged and said he wasn’t hungry. 

Dinner was leftovers from the other night. Beth reheated the beef stroganoff on the stove and called everyone in. When Summer entered she asked where Morty was and Jerry chuckled and said he was probably busy ‘face-chatting’ some girl. Not a second later Rick stomped one of his empty beer cans under his foot and tossed it in the recycling. 

At the table, her father looked out of place without Morty by his side. Besides that, he barely ate. She watched him push around the same noodle clump for a full six minutes before he gave up and, on her life, Beth swore he pouted. His eyes flicked up every thirty seconds to the kitchen entrance leading towards the stairs. 

Jerry talked idly at dinner about nothing in particular. Beth missed most of what he said and just responded with little “uh-huh”s when prompted. She saw her father dig into one of his pockets and she saw an LED screen light up against his face from where he texted under the table. 

And then his foot started tapping.

He checked his phone twice, with no indication he’d gotten a response. It was easy for her to guess what he was trying to do. He put his head in his palm and tapped away on his phone with the other. He typed for a long time and hit send and swallowed what was left in his flask and turned expectantly back to his phone. When no response lit up the screen he mournfully skewered a piece of beef and plopped it in his mouth.

Morty came into the kitchen about ten minutes later and made himself a small plate. Rick tried to be nonchalant about it but Beth almost gaped at the obvious way he followed Morty’s every movement. Morty left just as quickly as he came, taking his meager dinner to his bedroom.

Rick slammed his plate and silverware down and brushed off what he didn’t eat, which was most of it, into the trash and slammed the garage door behind him. 

Everybody else finished up shortly after. Summer announced she was heading out with some friends and was probably spending the night. Jerry went off to the study after he helped Beth clean up the table. She poured herself a glass of wine and finished about half of it before she decided she would go check on her dad. 

She knocked on the garage door and only briefly paused before entering.

“Hey, Dad,” she said, feeling a bit nervous. His back was turned to her and he didn’t look up as she crossed the threshold. “I guess you thought maybe I was Morty.” She forced a laugh.

“Nope.”

“Nope?”

“Nope,” he said and soldered some pieces of steel together, “Morty doesn’t knock.”

“Oh,” Beth awkwardly looked around the room.

“What—urp—w-wh-what’s up?” He burped.

“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering if you were doing okay?”

At that, he turned to her. “What?” His eyes were narrow and his mouth was pressed into a thin line.

“I just thought you seemed kind of off and dinner and I was wondering if everything was okay.”

Without breaking eye contact, Rick grabbed a bottle of whiskey around the neck and drunk straight from it.

“I’m fine, Beth. S-S-Sh-Sh-Shouldn’t you be asking your son that? He-He was the one who ran off to his room.” He finished the bottle and dropped it into the bin under the table. It cracked and shattered against the other glass bottles but he didn’t flinch. Didn’t even acknowledge it. Just stared at his daughter with a gaze Beth couldn’t read.

The air seemed tight. Like if she said anything else it would be too much and her father would snap under the pressure. She slowly backed out of the room and pointed weakly to the stairs, too afraid to speak. She shut the door and left her father alone.

She hadn’t even considered going to Morty, which at this point, she realized should’ve been her first stop. It made her sick to think she reached out to her father before her own son, who was definitely the actual victim in this situation. 

Instead, without even thinking, she found herself attempting to worm into the wedge she’d drove between her son and father. No adventures meant they couldn’t get up to anything . . . any of their usual— _ whatever _ they did when they were on their adventures, which Beth rightfully suspected involved a lot of uninhibited touching. 

Beth wondered what they would have rather done if she wasn’t there. If nobody was in the house but the two of them, and Beth hadn’t forbade them from going on adventures, her father probably would’ve hauled her son into his lap and fondled him unabashedly. Morty would’ve been beamed and moaned. He would’ve kissed and begged for Rick to keep on going and her father would’ve indulged him until he was sated. 

One day into their adventure-ban and both of them were sulking like children. Had they really gotten so attached to one another in the three years since her father had rejoined the family that being unable to occupy each other’s gravity for one day threw them off this much?

Beth stood in front of her son’s door and waited. 

Clenching her teeth, she bitterly considered how he father had left her twenty-three years ago and probably never even  _ thought  _ about her. Yet, even still being permitted to occupy the same space as her son but unable to whisk him off and molest him had him slamming back beers the way she only saw her mother do when Rick disappeared for weeks on end. 

She turned away from her son’s room and stomped back down the stairs. She finished her glass of wine and poured herself another. She hopped up on the counter—a thing she hadn’t done since she was a teenager and trying to figure out what to do after the pregnancy test came back positive.

She wound up drinking for a few hours until she heard someone coming down the stairs. Logic told her the only person it could’ve been was Morty, but she still hoped it was anyone else. She thought maybe he would go to the garage and try to sneak out onto some adventure. But he didn’t. 

Instead, he strolled into the kitchen and grabbed himself a glass of water. He was wearing the black gray sweater Rick had gotten him last Christmas. It had a smattering of stars and nebulas throughout the whole thing. It was a bit big on him, which Beth thought was odd since Rick was obviously smart enough to buy the right size clothes. Now she realized it was probably intentional. The collar hung loosely around Morty’s neck and exposed his collar bones. The cuffs slipped past his fingertips and he had to push them back constantly. Still, he wore it.

Beth noticed his eyes were red and he sniffled once as he waited for his glass to fill. She didn’t say anything. Instead, she poured herself another glass. Normally, by this point, her hands would’ve been shaking. They were steady, like when she was performing surgery. Or, more accurately, like when she was pissed off. 

Recalling a time when she was fourteen and her mother took her back-to-school shopping, Beth frowned around the mouth of her glass. Her mother’s makeup had been smudged and her eyes puffy from crying. Her father had promised to come shopping with them in the morning but when Beth awoke she found her mom curled up on the empty space in their bed where Rick should’ve been. That was the last time he left. 

But now he came back. Not for her, certainly not for her mother, not for any reason she could comprehend. Except, he’d probably met other Ricks who told him that most Beth’s conceived a son when she was twenty. At thirty-four, Morty was fourteen. Apparently, that was old enough for Rick.

It made her wonder when it started.

Morty left with his glass and Beth let him. It was obvious to both of them he had been crying and even more obvious she wasn’t going to question him about it. 

She didn’t know when it happened but around four in the morning, she found herself lying over the stove, using one of the burners as a pillow. It had left little coil impressions all along her cheek. In the dark, she carefully slid off the counter, as much as her wine-hangover let her. She cringed as she stepped into a puddle of what must’ve been her last wine and the shattered pieces of the glass. 

Flipping on the light, she avoided the mess and cleaned it up with the dustpan and some bleach. She washed her hands and checked her feet. They were free of cuts and for a moment she wondered why nobody, particularly her husband, had come and wondered where she was. Did nobody hear the glass shatter?

But her daughter was gone, and she found her husband asleep in his arm chair playing that stupid balloon game, and her son and father were too busy sulking on opposite sides of the house to bother paying attention to the person who was the source of this distress. Cracking her neck, she considered venturing into the garage, just to see if her father was still there. Or maybe peeking into her son’s room to see if she could spy the outline of two bodies on his twin-sized mattress. 

She didn’t.

She was waiting, she affirmed. Though she wasn’t quite sure what she was waiting for. That would’ve been opportunity enough to put an end to everything. Surely, it would’ve been. Especially if they were wrapped around each other in an impossibly platonic way. But not only wouldn’t they be—her father was too smart to fuck up like that—but she also wasn’t done making her assessments. 

Today was now officially the second day and she couldn’t imagine what sort of pressure the two would be under now. Especially if she forced them into a room together to work on Morty’s schoolwork.

_ Oh, yes,  _ she thought. The clock switched over to five and she said “fuck it” and decided it was morning enough. The sun was already warming the eastern sky and chasing away the night with its splendor of golds and oranges. She made one pot of coffee and drank that whole thing by the time the rest of the family shuffled into the kitchen—excluding Summer, of course.

Jerry was the first one up. He sat in the kitchen, drank a cup of coffee, which Beth had made another pot of, and scrolled through his facebook feed. Morty arrived not too shortly after. He made himself a bowl of cereal, still wearing the same sweatshirt and shorts he had on last night, and tucked himself against the arm of the couch. It was Rick’s preferred spot since it had a table to set his liquor on, which is why when Rick emerged from the garage—no surprise there, he’d probably fallen asleep there like the rest of the narcoleptic weirdos this family was in no short supply of—he looked torn. 

He huffed and sat on the middle cushion. Morty grunted and picked up his feet, which were slightly splayed past his own section. Another misadventure of Steely played. Her father reached across Morty, grabbed the remote, and turned the volume up about ten clicks. 

Then her father leaned into her son’s ears and said something she couldn’t discern. The way Rick paused and leaned his ear closer to Morty made her think he responded to him. It looked like the silence was over. Or so she thought until Morty suddenly stood and marched into the kitchen.

Jerry frowned and spoke: “Hey, Rick, could you turn that down a bit? It’s way too loud.”

Her father raised his middle finger over the back of the couch and her husband scoffed. 

She went upstairs, showered, and changed clothes. When she came back downstairs she saw Rick had turned off the TV and was now rummaging around the kitchen for some sweets.

“Hey, Dad, do you think today you and Morty could work on his school stuff?” Beth gave him her best smile but it was wasted. He didn’t even look at her. He only frowned as he ripped open the bag of wafers and stuffed two at a time into his mouth. 

“Morty’s helping me today, Beth,” Jerry chimed in from the breakfast table, “isn’t that right, champ?”

Looking up from where he’d pulled a chair up next to his dad, Morty flashed a brief but shit-eating grin towards her father. 

“Yeah,” he said, eyes gleaming, “D-Dad and I are gonna clean the bathrooms.”

“Oooh,” Rick mocked, slamming the box of wafers on the counter, “sounds super exciting. I hope you both have a really great time scrubbing away old shit and piss stains.”

Morty puffed out his chest in challenge, “we will.” 

“Good!” Rick yelled, gesturing wildly with his hands. 

“I know it’s good!” Morty hollered back. 

“I’m glad you know it’s good!”

“Well, I’m glad you’re glad I know it’s good!”

“Alright!” Jerry clapped his hands once, looking pleased with himself, as if this was all his doing. “Are we ready?” Jerry stood up and sauntered out of the kitchen with Morty at his heels, glaring at Rick the whole time. 

Rick growled and stomped off to the garage. Of course he wouldn’t be able to get any work done, not with his mind all tormented by stupid bullshit. 

It wasn’t thirty minutes later, when she was bringing some laundry into the garage, that Morty stumbled out of the first-floor bathroom, leaning against the wall.

“M-Mom? I-I-I don’t feel so good,” Morty rasped. His face was flushed and sweaty. Beth let the laundry basket clatter to the floor and she called for Jerry. In a few moments her husband came barreling down the stairs and Rick had emerged from the garage about the same time. Rick pushed past Beth and kneeled down to Morty’s level.

“Oh, my God, Morty,” Jerry panicked, “you look terrible! What happened to you?” Jerry put a hand on Morty’s shoulder and tried to turn him towards him but Rick batted his hand away.

“Morty, what’s wrong? What are you feeling?” Rick cupped Morty’s head and tilted it side to side.

“I-I-I-It’s h-h-h-hard to breathe,” he wheezed, “a-a-a-a-and I’m l-light-headed and I think I’m gonna puke. M-My eyes sting.” Morty finished lamely. He leaned his head into Rick’s hands, seeking the coolness and comfort he’d come to associate with them.

Rick sniffed the air and bolted down to the bathroom Morty had been occupying. “Oh, my fucking God!” Rick dashed in, flipped on the fan, grabbed the cleaners, and slammed the door closed. 

“W-What?” Beth and Jerry cried. 

Rick came back, arms full of four different bottles and held them in front of Morty. “W-W-Which ones of these did you use?”

Morty panted against the wall and pointed to the two bottles in Rick’s left arm. 

Rick dropped the other two, “Did you mix them, Morty?” He examined the first bottle and scanned through the ingredients on the second one.

Morty nodded weakly. 

“Beth, start boiling a shit ton of water. Th-Then pour it into a wide plastic bowl,” Rick barked and sat Morty down in one of the chairs. 

Jerry chose that moment to pipe in. “What’s the problem? I told him to use the toilet bowl cleaner and the bleach together.”

After Rick made sure Morty was settled he pushed his chair in then shoved the cleaners in Jerry’s arms. “ _ You  _ told him to do that? God fucking damn it, Jerry, I knew you were stupid but that  _ really  _ takes the cake. I-I-I—”

Jerry crossed his arms and looked at Rick crossly, “what does that have to do with my son having a fever?”

Rick grabbed Jerry by the shirt and pinned him against the wall. “You really are a stupid piece of shit. Bleach is fucking  _ bleach  _ and t-t-that toilet bowl cleaner you have contains  _ ammonia _ . You know, Jerry,  _ ammonia  _ and  _ bleach _ ?  _ Chlorine gas?  _  The fucking pussy-ass predecessor to mustard gas? The chemical weapon—urp— Hitler thought was  _ too fucked up  _ to use? You basically poisoned my grandson!” 

“What?” Morty croaked, “a-a-am I gonna die?” 

Rick’s rage vanished just as soon as it had surfaced at the sound of Morty’s strained voice. He kneeled at Morty’s side and grabbed his hands.

“No, bab—b-buddy. No, buddy. D-Don’t worry, it’s not fatal. You’d basically—urp—have to drink the stuff to die. Your lungs and eyes are just irritated right now. You’re gonna have to inhale steam for about ten or twenty minutes but then you’ll feel all better. Okay?” He squeezed Morty’s hands tenderly. “Beth? W-W-Where’s that water.” 

“It’s done boiling, Dad,” she sat as she fished for a suitable bowl. She poured the contents of the tea kettle into a wide tupperware bowl and set it in front of Morty.

As if he needed help, Rick pulled up a chair for himself and guided Morty’s head over the steaming bowl. 

“Close your eyes,” he instructed and brushed Morty’s sweaty bangs back, “and just take deep, slow breaths.” Morty did as he was told. He complied with Rick’s movements, following him without a hint of resistance. His hands peeked out from under the table. One of them gripped Rick’s lab coat and the other sought out something else. Rick continued carding his fingers through Morty’s hair but spared one hand to hold Morty’s. Running his thumb back and forth over Morty’s knuckles in time with his breathing made Beth startle at how quickly they could fall into each other and sync. 

Jerry went back upstairs, carrying the various cleaners, came back, and set a bottle of water by Morty. It seemed to be a peace-offering and an apology all rolled into one. Rick uncapped it and pulled Morty back from the bowl and pressed the bottle against his lips. 

Beth rolled her eyes. Morty was clearly more than capable of drinking on his own, and using his own hands—as he proved by reaching up and wrapping his fingers around Rick’s on the bottle—but yet Rick still babied him. 

Beth looked down at the burner she hadn’t turned off. 

Looking back at her son gulping around the bottle Rick had at his lips made Beth comb her memory for a time when Rick bottle-fed her. Of course, she would’ve been an infant and unable to recall, so she searched for a time when she had gotten injured. One time when she was five she fell off her bike when Rick had taken the training wheels off. She cried, and her knees and palms were scraped, embedded with gravel. Her mom soaked her in a bath of epsom salts and put a bunch of star-patterned bandages on her cuts.

Suddenly, Morty coughed. Water spilled from his mouth and onto his sweater as Rick set the bottle down. He wiped Morty’s mouth with his lab coat and stroked a hand up and down his back, murmuring words of encouragement. 

“You okay?” Rick asked, in a tone he had never used with Beth. It was soft like silk and just as soothing.

Morty nodded and smiled, though there were tears in his eyes.

After Beth had scraped herself that night, Rick put the training wheels back on her bike at the behest of her mother and told her to be more careful.

Rick wiped the tears from Morty’s eyes and ran his thumbs over his cheeks, slowly, taking his time, like he hadn’t been able to in ages. “You’re looking—l-l-looking better already. Just ten more minutes of the steam and you’ll be perfect again.”

As Rick guided Morty’s head back over the bowl, Beth pressed her hand against the red-hot coils of the burner and clung to them for as long as she could withstand.

She tore her hand away with a yelp. It hurt a lot more than she expected. The searing pain in her hand was a thousand times worse than scraping her palms. Morty picked his head up from the bowl, Rick turned over his shoulder, and her husband came into the kitchen beside her.

“What happened?” Morty asked, his voice steadily returning in full.

“I touched the burner,” Beth explained. Rick turned back to Morty and angled his head back down.

“J-Just—urp—just run it under some cold water for ten minutes. You’ll be fine.”

Jerry went over to the sink, plugged the drain, and ran the tap with cold water. He also switched the burner off and set the tea kettle away. 

“We all good, here?” Jerry asked, pulling out his phone, “I told Summer I could pick her up from her friend’s house at noon.” 

Rick only waved Jerry off and then it was just the three of them. Beth and her smarting hand submerged into the sink, unable to pull herself away from the same place her son and father occupied. 

“It really hurts, Dad,” she choked.

He didn’t even turn around.

“Uh-huh, just take some tylenol and keep your hand under there. You’ll be fine.” Rick pulled Morty back from the bowl, which had cooled and only ebbed the thinnest wisps of steam. “How you feeling?”

Morty took a long inhale before responding. “G-Good.” 

Rick exhaled, “do you want to watch some TV?” 

Morty nodded and they both pushed away from the table. As Morty shifted his weight to his feet he stumbled forward, but her father caught him in practically no time at all. 

“G-Guess I’m still a little woozy,” Morty laughed.

When Beth was seven, she was on the monkey bars. Rick walked behind her, hands outstretched and ready. “I’ve got you,” he said. Beth lost his grasp on the fourth bar, not even halfway across, and she tumbled into the woodchips, slipped right through her father’s fingers. She bellyflopped and got the wind knocked out of her, but she was fine. Her chest hurt, but not as much as her dad missing her. 

Rick gathered Morty into his arms, using one arm to support his waist and another wrapped around his back, holding him tight against his body. It was almost embarrassing how much Morty had to resist muscle memory and not wrap his legs around his grandfather. Beth wondered how many times Rick had carried him, held him, with far fewer clothes on. 

“It’s okay, Morty,” he said, as the boy wrapped his arms around her father’s neck and gripped the hair at his nape, “I’ve got you.” He carried Morty effortlessly into the living room. Beth couldn’t follow but she could still see them. 

Rick laid Morty out on the couch, gently set his head onto the arm, and flipped on the TV. He lowered the vowel back to what it was normally and settled in his usual spot. Morty was small enough that curled into a fetal position only made him take up spots. 

Beth drained the water, dried her hand, and thought this time was as perfect as any. She said she was going to take some painkillers and nap. Neither of them paid her much mind.

Her palm still ached, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as what it had been. Chancing a look, she gasped at the bulging, blistered skin that covered most of her palm. She took double the recommended dose and decided she was thankful she had used her non-dominant hand. She pulled the baby monitor out the drawer and clicked the receiver on. 

It picked up the sound of the TV in the background, but when her father spoke, it brought his voice is, clear as ever.

“Your dad’s a really dumb piece of shit, Morty. I-I-I was this close to killing him, I swear to the God that never existed.” 

Morty didn’t respond.

Rick sighed, “I’m glad you’re okay. Just don’t go in that bathroom for a couple hours. The chemicals have probably dissipated but I want to check first.”

Morty hummed. 

“Morty.”

“Yes, Rick?”

There was a pause. 

“Why didn’t you respond to my messages last night?”

There sound of gunfire from the episode of Ball Fondlers they were watching filtered in.

“Morty.” Rick’s voice was firmer this time.

“Because I didn’t want to talk to you.”

Beth couldn’t see it, but she bet her father rolled his eyes. “Duh-doi, Morty. I-I-I got that. I’m trying to talk about this. I’m a genius but you’ve still gotta communicate with me. I know—urp—know you’re pissed about yesterday because I wasn’t paying attention to you, but that’s really unfair, Morty. What do you want from me? We were sitting in the living room and everybody was around us. Your sister was sitting right next to you for Christ’s sake. A-A-And you were waiting on me like some kind of wife from one of those shows from the fifties, w-w-w-with the nuclear family bullshit.”

“You could've said thank you,” Morty mumbled, “y-y-you don’t have to be an ass just to make sure we-we don’t get caught.”

Rick sighed. “Yeah, you’re right, Morty. And I’m sorry. I-I’m sure I can act normal and not, you know, one extreme or the other. I-I’m kind of a man of extremes there, though. Go big or go home.”

Morty let out a little laugh.

“Do you forgive me, Morty?”

Morty hummed, “maybe.”

“Maybe?” Rick asked, though his tone was clearly playful.

“Yeah,” Morty paused, dramatically, “if you do something for me.”

“What’s that?”

The conversation stopped there. Beth couldn’t hear what was happening over the sound of the TV. 

“Better?” Rick asked. 

“Better.” Morty agreed, somewhat breathlessly. 

“Good, now get off of me.”

“Rick,” Morty’s tone was pitiful.

“Morty,” he admonished, “we can’t. It’s not safe. Your dad and sister could walk in at any time.”

“Can’t you hear the sound of the car?”

Rick considered that for a moment. “Not over the sound of your moans I can’t.”

“You owe me, Rick, I almost died today.”

“You didn’t almost die. I-I-If you had  _ almost  _ died I  _ would  _ have killed Jerry.”

Morty giggled.

“How is that funny?”

“I dunno, Rick. J-J-Just how protective you get. It makes me feel good. L-Like you don’t want to lose me.”

“Baby, I  _ don’t  _ want to lose you. That’s why we’re doing this shit. That’s why we’re putting up with your mom and her adventure-ban until we can get her off our asses. Then it’ll be business like usual.”

“I don’t like it, Rick.”

“I don’t l—urp—like it either but—”

“No, Rick. I don’t like pretending.”

Rick stopped breathing.

“I-I-I don’t like that we have to hide a-a-a-and that we can’t sleep in the same bed. I feel terrified coming home. T-T-The only time I feel normal is when we’re out around the galaxy, not pretending we don’t love each other. I don’t—” Morty started to cry, and someone—it must’ve been Rick—muted the TV. “I don’t l-l-like f-f-f-feeling like loving you is wrong. B-B-Because the o-o-only time I feel wrong is when I’m pretending I’m normal a-a-and when I think about what would happen to you i-if someone found out. I love you so much Rick a-a-and I-I-I-I don’t know how much longer I can d-do this-this pretending. I hate being apart from you, Rick. I hate not being able to smile at you like I want to because I-I-I’m afraid someone will see h-how much I love you. I hate knowing the best part of my life could be ripped away from me at any second.”

“Morty, hey,” Rick shushed him, “I-I-I-I understand, baby. I do. Y-You’re my baby boy. If I could I’d have you sleeping in my bed every night, e-e-every inch of your skin kissed each night. I-I’d wake you up, and we could make out slowly, wherever we want, and take our time, because it would just be the two of us. And I’d make you breakfast every morning and we’d go on adventures every day and then we’d come home and shower together and fall into bed and do it all over again the next day. I thought about you all day yesterday, Morty, you know that? Drove me crazy thinking about how mad you were at me. T-T-That I couldn’t do anything because if someone found me I—Morty, you mean so much to me, you know that, don’t you?”

“Y-Yeah, Rick, I do.” Morty paused, “Do you love me?” judging by his tone, Beth figured he already knew the answer.

“ _ Fuck, baby _ , I love you. I love you—” his breath hitched, “I love you more than anything, Morty. Do you understand? No one, Morty. No one fucking compares to you.” The sound of wet kisses filtered through the monitor, so clear they made Beth’s stomach flair.

Morty sighed, sounding completely blissed out. 

There was the slide of fabric against fabric as suddenly both their voices sounded further away. Morty seemed to be breathing harder.

“You’re heavy, Rick.”

“Sorry, Morty.” More sound of fabric rustling.

“Better?”

“Better.”

The kisses resumed and Morty’s squeals became louder and more prolonged.

“How much, Rick?” Morty said after a minute. “How much do you love me?” 

“More than anything, Morty.” 

“Enough to leave mom, again?”

Beth’s stomach sunk.

The kisses stopped.

_ No no no no, God, no. Please. _

“If you asked, Morty,” 

Beth dug her nails into her scalp and stopped breathing.

“In a heartbeat.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm guessing probably 3 more chapters? Yeah.

**Author's Note:**

> Woo!! Let me know if anything was confusing/something you'd like me to go into more. I'm open to suggestions. As always, leave a comment if you liked it lol they calm my anxiety.


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